As those skilled in the art are aware governmental and municipal agencies have long been plagued by vandalism of street and traffic signs. The type of damage caused by vandals includes uprooting a sign post, knocking the sign over, defacing the sign held by the post and other forms of malicious and mindless property damage. Where, for instance, a post is simply broken in two so that a stub must be removed, the amount of effort and time required of the workmen who must remove the stub and replace the sign post may be considerable. This is particularly so if the broken post had some type of old and well known anchor means attached. In such a case the amount of digging required of the crew will be substantial. The same is true of any post which must be removed whatever the reason may be.
The known means of providing an anchoring feature for a post include a number of spikes pounded into and protruding from the part of the post which is below ground. Another old anchoring method includes nailing pieces of board such as short lengths of 2.times.4 to the butt of the post. As may be appreciated a large hole must be dug in order to remove a post with these kinds of locking structures attached. Accordingly, governmental entities incur large annual expenses for labor, post materials, sign maintenance, repair and replacement.
It must be kept in mind that many municipalities have ordinances which require that certain types of signs must be replaced within a specified number of hours. It can be understood that certain signs are necessary to public safety and are therefore important.
The only known art pertaining to the instant invention includes U.S. Pat. No. 4,522,530 to Arthur which is directed to a self-erecting marking post. This prior art device utilizes a lower end portion which carries outwardly projecting spring fingers which positively lock into the ground. The structure and intent of the patented device is significantly different and distinct from the device of this application. Other United States Patents are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,106,879; 353,050; 319,823; and 1,038,147, none of which is pertinent to the instant device.